Henri Baucher was one of eight opponents of Paul Morphy during his blindfold match in Café de la Régence.
Very few information was known about him. For example, his chessgames page only mentions that he was born on October 22nd, 1818 and that he died on June 19th, 1912.
Following one of Sarah’s links from Baucher’s edochess page, one learns that Baucher was the son of an equestrian professor. This information is taken from a text entitled Les cafés artistiques et littéraires de Paris, page 128, written by Auguste Lepage and published in 1882. An online version of this text is available here.
A Google search for “Baucher équitation” (équitation is the French word for horse riding) leads to the wikipedia page of François Baucher (the English version is available here: François Baucher – Wikipedia). His son, Henri Baucher, is mentioned a few times on the French version of the wikipedia page (but with no interesting personal information) but not on the English page.
I could find much more relevant information by searching for Henri Baucher on https://www.geneanet.org/ . The page https://gw.geneanet.org/missprairie?n=baucher&oc=&p=henri+marie, actually illustrated with the famous picture of Morphy’s blindfold performance in Paris, gives the following interesting information:
Henri Marie Baucher was himself horse riding professor. He was married to Héloïse Georgine Cholet (1836-1865), who apparently died at the age of 29. This may explain why no children are listed. Various interesting excerpts of documents are also given:
- a link to Le Monde Illustré, March 7th, 1874, in which Baucher is mentioned in the following excerpt:
Mr. Baucher, an imperturbable player, who never lets anything disturb or disconcert him, directing his games with masterly confidence, and almost always ending them, to the great disappointment of his opponents, with a superbly prepared mate.
- excerpts of Le Palamède français, pages 353 – 354 (I have yet to find in which issue this was published)
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